


The List

by Hinn_Raven



Series: Marsha Tabris [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Background Relationships, Gen, Multiple Wardens (Dragon Age), Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2020-02-26 16:17:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18720607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: A Very Angry Elf’s Guide to the Assholes of Thedas.





	The List

**Loghain**

“I’ll do it,” the Cousland sisters chorus at the same time, then turn to glare at each other.

“No. I’ll do it.”

Lira shakes her head. “ _He’s a warrior. One good hit and you’re down for the count_.”

“Then I won’t let him hit me!” Marsha turns to the sisters. “Listen. I get it. But if you two go out there, it’s not a Grey Warden doing it. It’s a  _Cousland_. It’s Cousland vengeance, not Grey Warden impartiality.”

“Screw impartiality!” Masha snapped.

“I get it, you’re pissed, but this can’t be a  _coup_! This needs to be legitimate. Let me do it. I’m an elf. He’ll underestimate me, and  _when_  I take him down, he’ll be humiliated.”

“Not good enough,” Seren’s hand was on her sword already.

“Howe was yours!” Marsha snaps. The siblings freeze. “Howe was yours, and I won’t say a word against that, and I let you guys deal with it, even though he burned down my home too. I didn’t contest that. But  _he_ —” she jerks her finger at Loghain. “He sold my neighbors into slavery. He tried to sell my  _father_.” Marsha turns her back on her friends. “He’s  _mine_.”

She strides into the ring. “I’ll do it,” she says, and she hears the titters from the bannorn, and she can actually feel the weight of Eamon’s disappointment. Doubtlessly he wanted Alistair; a dashing young hero for the stories to tell for years to come.

Well, let them tell this story.

Loghain had been Adaia Tabris’s commanding officer at the Battle of River Dane. She had went into battle carrying a dagger named Fang.

Marsha Tabris goes into the ring carrying that dagger. She looks just like her mother. She wonders if Loghain remembers her mother. She wonders if he recognizes the dagger.

She decides she doesn’t care.

* * *

 

**Bhelen**

He makes her skin crawl, he’s so smarmy. He calls Lira ‘sister’ and smiles at her, but Marsha doesn’t believe him.

He’s marrying Rica, and he talks about modernization and the future, about upending status quo.

Marsha thinks he’ll be a good leader, and Lira wants to put him on the throne, so that’s what they’re going to do.

But that doesn’t mean Marsha has to  _like_  him.

* * *

 

**The Fade**

She doesn’t look at Krim afterwards, avoids his questioning eyes.

She fights, instead.

It’s what she’s good at.

It doesn’t stop the nightmares.

* * *

 

**Anora**

“Marsha my dear, I really don’t think that stabbing Queen Anora will solve any problems,” Zevran whispers in her ear, his arm thrown around her shoulder like it was a romantic gesture instead of pinning her arm away from her dagger.

“She  _betrayed us_ ,” Marsha hissed between set teeth.

Seren, Lira and Krim all still showed the marks. Krim was still woozy from the magebane.

Marsha wanted to stop that woman from smiling to  _smugly_. So sure of herself. So confident that she should stay in charge because she’d been running the show already.

She didn’t stop to consider that  _maybe_ , Marsha and the others wanted change. That they’d seen the things done while she had sat on that throne of hers, and either she hadn’t stopped it, or she hadn’t noticed it, and Marsha wasn’t sure which one was worse.

Marsha struggled to stay calm.

It was a hard task.

* * *

 

**Arl Howe**

The door closes behind Seren and Masha.

“Make sure no one interrupts them?” Krim suggests brightly, but his face is pale.

“You should go down the hall,” Marsha says to him. Krim shakes his head. Marsha wonders if he’d heard people being tortured before.

Marsha needs to stay, needs to know in her bones that justice is served. Lira’s heard worse, Marsha doesn’t doubt that.

Or maybe they’re all just too stubborn.

The screaming starts.

Marsha closes her eyes.

* * *

 

**The entirety of the noble caste**

Seriously.

 _Fuck Orzammar_.

* * *

 

**Eamon**

Alistair is her  _friend_.

That is where it starts.

She knows bad parents. Bad parents are everywhere in the alienage. For every father like hers, there are a dozen who are absent, or drunk, or cruel. She knows bad parents.

She also knows the children who have bad parents.

She sees it in the way that Lira dances around talking about her mother. She sees it in the way that Morrigan talks about her childhood.

And she sees it in Alistair.

Finding out he slept in the kennels with dogs is just the proof she needs.

She can’t fight him.

They need him.

But as he starts to talk about Alistair on the throne, as if Alistair isn’t even  _present_ , she grits her teeth and promises herself that Eamon will  _never_ get to be the power of the throne.

Even if that means she has to rip apart Ferelden to do it.

* * *

 

**Broodmothers**

“Kill me if it ever looks like they’re dragging me off, okay?” Marsha says to Seren, as they nurse their wounds, sitting in the blood. “Please.”

Seren nods, her face pale beneath all the blood.

* * *

 

**Harrowmont**

She sees the way he looks at Lira, and it makes her skin crawl. Upholding tradition, in her experience, is usually a code for cracking down on the elves. She guesses in Orazmmar it means cracking down on the Dusters.

She listens to what he has to say about Bhelen, but all she can do is shrug.

Nobles kill each other all the time. If it weren’t for Masha and Seren, Marsha would have been willing to say that they didn’t have consciences.

Bhelen can have the throne.

And Orzammar can go to the  _void_.

* * *

 

**Isolde**

“Who is this  _elf_ , Tegan?” Marsha narrows her eyes. Orlesian, rude, and annoying.

Learning she’s the asshole who got Alistair sent off to the Templars really just seals the deal.

* * *

 

**The Circle**

Marsha’s never really thought about the Circle.

When she was a kid, she knew a girl named Surana who was magic. Surana went into the Circle not long after, her mother crying as the Templars dragged her away.

Surana’s mother was a rare elf who knew how to write. She wrote dozens of letters to her daughter.

She never heard back.

The Circle felt like a prison. The corridors were full of death and decay and demons and magic and fire.

Marsha could understand why Krim had been desperate to run away from this place.

Blood magic makes Marsha’s skin crawl, but hearing the woman describe how the Templars watched their every move gives her pause. She follows Krim’s lead. This is his home, after all. He knows it best.

She sees an old woman defending kids, and realizes that the Rite of Annulment would kill them too.

Her fingers wrap tighter around the hilts of her weapons, and she vows that she will  _not_ see this tower fall.

* * *

 

**Lira’s Mom**

Speaking of terrible mothers.

If Lira hadn’t asked her not to kill her, Marsha would have happily.

She gets that Lira doesn’t want her dead, though.

It doesn’t mean that Marsha can’t threaten to cut off her fingers if she ever says anything like that to Lira again.

* * *

 

**Zathrien**

Marsha is an elf. A knife ear. A rabbit. She’s been that her entire life. It’s a  _part_ of her. Her mother died for it, Shiani suffered for it, and Marsha nearly swung on the gallows for it.

They call her flat ear, amongst the Dalish.

Marsha flinches outright the first time she hears it. She’s supposed to be in charge this time around. These are elves, after all. She has a few words of the old tongue patched into her vocabulary, stories that her mother told her as a child in her mind.

None of that matters to Zathrien.

She’s not  _one of the people_.

She’s not  _good enough_.

Marsha should let Seren or Masha take the lead on this one. Maybe Krim, since Zathrien is a mage.

But she stares him right in the eye and keeps talking.

She’s an elf, Maker damn them all. She might not have their precious markings or know what words they’re whispering behind her back, but she’s an elf and a Grey Warden, and  _damn it_ she will make them respect her if it kills her to do so.

* * *

 

**Orlais**

“Oh! Rabbit! I need you to carry this message to the Queen!” The accent is heavy, and the mask makes it unmistakable. “The Orlesian Ambassador carries  _important_ news from her Imperial Majesty, and I  _must_ discuss it with her in person.”

Marsha freezes. She’s not wearing her armor; she has only just arrived at the palace after stopping at the alienage to drop off Zevran and the kids. But she’d have  _thought_  she was famous enough not to be stopped, even without the Grey Warden crest sewn onto all of her clothes. She’s even wearing the colors, and carrying her weapons.

It’s been a while since she’s been mistaken for a servant in the Denerim Palace.

“What did you just call me?” She turns towards him slowly. “Surely I must have been mistaken.”

The man sighed. “Honestly, you Ferelden elves are so  _sensitive_. You get ideas above our station! Go, fetch the Queen! Hurry!” He tries to dismiss her with a wave of his hands.

Marsha puts her hands on her hips. “You actually have no idea who I am, do you?”

“An upstart knife-ear servant!” The man snaps, apparently determined to dig his grave deeper. “Now hurry! Or I’ll have a word to your mistress!”

“I have no mistress,” Marsha said blandly. “My name is Marsha Tabris, Hero of Ferelden, Veteran of the Fifth Blight, Bann of the Denerim Alienage, Arlessa of Amaranthine, and  _personal friend_ to the same Queen you’re desperately seeking an audience with under the pretense of official business. All of which should have been conducted yesterday. You’re coming back today to try to beg favors.”

The man grew pale underneath his mask, spluttering. “You  _dare_.”

“Yes, I dare.” Marsha grinned widely. “I killed an archdemon and fought  _dragons_. You expect me to drop a curtsy just because you insulted me?”

“Marsha!” Seren swept into the room, cutting off Marsha’s exit. But ooh, this was even better.

“Seren!” Marsha hugged her old friend, not even bothering to hide her smirk at the expression on the ambassador’s face.

“I didn’t know you were back from Rivain already!” Bullshit. They’d sent word last week they were on their way, but Marsha didn’t call her out. Seren was fantastic at this game. “Let’s catch up over tea.” Marsha raised an eyebrow. Krim was in the palace at the moment, so she doubted they’d be drinking anything weaker than beer. “Cancel all my appointments for the rest of the day, will you?” Seren said this to an actual attendant, who bowed and ran off. Marsha doubted there were any real appointments. Lira had arrived from Amaranthine yesterday, according to Shiani, and Masha had come three weeks ago for the Landsmeet.

Marsha would eat her armor if Seren hadn’t set aside the next three evenings for them all to get incredibly drunk.

But she tucked her hand into her friend’s arm anyway and let herself be lead away.

“You didn’t attack him!” Seren said as they turned the corner. “We’re all so proud.”

“We?”

Then she spotted the others, standing just out of sight and grinning widely. Marsha laughed, and threw herself towards her friends.

It was good to be back.


End file.
